Opening the Door
by Person4
Summary: Step by step, Helena shapes him into the man she wishes he would be.


She asked him to meet her behind the tent once the circus was over, even though she knew she was just setting herself up for disappointment. The more time she spent with him the more she would surely see that he was _not_ Valentine, that the voice and the mouth did not equal the man. 

But, still, she wanted to be near him. And he wanted to be a juggler. That worked out well enough. 

"What's you name, by the way?" he asked as she showed him how to toss balls between the two of them. 

"Helena," she replied, stretching out to catch a throw of his that had flown wildly askew. "Yours?" 

"Thomas." He stopped throwing for a moment, swinging his arm back and forth to make sure his next toss would go straight. "Helena. That's a nice name." 

She didn't know how she could ever explain the pang of disappointment she felt at her name not being called drab, though luckily she doubted she'd ever have need to. Instead she plastered a smile on her face, giving herself her very own mask too late to fit into the lands of Light and Dark. "'Thomas' on the other hand, not very circusy, is it? If you do join up here, you should think about taking a stage name. Go for something with a bit of dignity and style, mixed with a bit of romance. Something like... Valentine." 

As she spoke he began looking thoughtful. "Valentine, eh? I don't know why, but I like the sound of that." 

∙ ∙ ∙

They had a man who usually made the masks for the performers for them, but Helena had insisted on making Thomas's herself. 'If I do well, we can save money on having them made!' she'd pulled out after her parents had protested a few times, and finally they'd given in. 

"Is this part _really_ necessary?" he asked, lying with his face buried in plaster of paris from his forehead to his nose. 

"Trust me, you should be grateful that I'm making a mold of you face instead of making you sit still while I cover your face in paper mache only to screw up and need to tear it all off and start over five times. Besides," she tapped the back of his head lightly, "it's bad luck to see your mask before your first show." 

"Is that so? Funny, you're the first person to tell _me_ that." 

"You don't think I'd _lie_ to you, do you? I've only got your best interests at heart, here." She turned her attention back to her sketchbook, where she had been drawing Valentine's, _her_ Valentine's, face. It would be perfect. It would be him. She would be sure of it. 

∙ ∙ ∙

"Valentine!" 

He looked up at the call; everyone had gotten used to her name for him by then, though she was still the only one who used it off stage. "What is it? Your father said I need to get up to keeping seven balls in the air _today_ if I want to be in the next show, so I'm a bit busy Helena." 

"This won't take long." She thrust the armful of fabrics she was holding out at him. "Here, I made you a costume! It's to go with your mask." 

He pulled the tattered robe that went over the rest of the costume out of the pile and looked it over, then gave her a lopsided smile, "So, I'm to be a ragamuffin, am I?" 

"_Hardly_." She smiled back, but there were dark things in her eyes if only he thought to look close enough to see them. "You're going to be a _very_ important man by the time I'm done with you." 

∙ ∙ ∙

The show would be starting soon, but she didn't rush while applying his makeup. "Don't twitch," she said, painting purple across his lips. "This needs to be perfect. I'll be _very_ upset with you if the lines don't end up straight between your mask and chin because you shouldn't stay still." 

"I feel silly, Helena," he said as soon as he could open his mouth without getting a brushful of body paint in it. "None of the others are made up this much." 

"You're new. You need to stand out; catch people's eyes. Trust me, I know what's best." She reached the start of where his nose would be covered by the mask and hesitated only slightly before pulling the brush higher, to his forehead. 

"What are you doing up there?" he asked, sounding amused. "It'll be covered by the mask, won't it?" 

"I'm giving you..." she thought for just a second, then settled on the old excuse, "...luck." It only took a few strokes for her to finish. 

When the brush pulled away from his skin, he craned his head sideways to get a look at what she'd done in a nearby mirror, and raised an eyebrow. "A door? That's supposed to be lucky, is it?" 

"No hinges on the outside, see? It opens inward, to let the luck in." She lifted up the mask, which she'd kept covered in a shawl until that moment. "Okay, I've gotten all the inside paint done. Time to put this on, so I can get the place where the white and purple join right." 

He took a deep breath as he lifted the mask, knowing that this was an important moment. Putting it on would mark the moment he went from being a guy who hung around learning juggling routines to being a circus performer himself. He turned it over in his hands and paused. "What's this painted on the inside? If it's something for _more_ luck, I'm going to have to start wondering exactly how bad you think I am." 

"It's not luck, it's a _tower_. I told you I'd make you a very important man, didn't I?" 

"And an important man should have a tower, should he?" 

"Of course. You should know that, Valentine." She lifted the mask from his hands and fitted it onto his face. 

As she had planned, the door on the tower matched exactly to the one she'd drawn into his mind. 

∙ ∙ ∙

She could tell the moment the change happened. It wasn't just in the way his juggling suddenly got worlds better, but also in how his movements suddenly got much more theatrical. It wasn't nervousness that had him very aware of the crowd now, as it had been seconds before. It was the desire to make sure they'd be cheering for him when he was done. 

"Helena," he hissed, and she could hear him even with the roar of the crowd. At that moment she was so aware of him that she thought she'd know what he was saying even if someone drove spikes into her ears and sealed her eyes shut. "Where are we? Who are all these people?" 

"Shhh," she breathed. "They're here to watch an important man perform, and we don't want to disappoint them, do we? There'll be plenty of time to talk about it later." 

All the time in the world, once she wiped the door from his forehead. 


End file.
